21 December 2006 14:43 -06:00 GMT

I'm in the Beantown Pub, in the heart of Boston, Massachusetts. Although my fingers are stiff from the cold, it's a very mild temperature for deep December; upper 40s during the day. (I didn't suspect at all that I'd be feeling mid 50s later this week. Global warming is a fact.) Across Boylston Street is the Granary cemetery, where victims of the Boston Massacre are laid to rest, including Paul Revere and the parents of Benjamin Franklin. I've had a lovely walk-about. I parked under Boston Common, then made a counter-clockwise, West-Southwest stroll through the Prudential district, Back Bay, and other parts unknown. I've stopped in bookshops, modern and old, and picked up one paperback called HIV Negative: How the Uninfected Are Affected by AIDS, by William I. Johnston. The first few pages hooked me.

After the pending meatloaf and mashed, washed down with a beer, I'll head North, toward the Charles River.

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This has been a rich visit. I met Tom O'Brien, the patriarch of my bloodline, who is 92 years old and steady of mind, if less so of gait. He is tall, with a full head of white hair, parted on the left as I do. While my budding physician instincts and my writing muse are tag-team screaming to go into a detailed physical description, my respect for family privacy wins the battler. Thomas O'Brien is tall, and stands straight, although walks with a cane now. He wears no glasses. He asked me about my Dad, my McDonald Dad, and whether he went to "Tech," which I took to mean M.I.T. and not CalTech. He had attended M.I.T., earlier than Dad, but his conversation compelled me to get Dad on the phone so they could see what they knew in common. I think they could have stayed on the phone a lot longer than the 20 minutes they did.

That was neat, how they two strangers who are mine could cross worlds, piggybacked on some electrons, and central to all of it, there I sat, watching as a connection - another connection between my biological and adoptive roots - was made. 

Tom told stories of the Sweeneys and the Bradleys, of the first of our line in the U.S. selling beer and other spirits at the location where the Brooklyn Bridge would one day be. Apparently, due to the fact that there was a ferry landing there, many folks got a little thirsty going to and fro across the river. My clan assisted in alleviating those thirsts. I'm not clear on how we settled in the Boston area...He also told of how our clan ran the Tamany Hall, what sounds like a powerful gang with great influence in the New York of four and five generations past.

I met Tom's daughter, Maureen, who is Marilynn's cousin and Associate Director of Ethics within the National Cancer Institute. She ran one of the first assays in Bob Gallo's lab on the blood that later showed a particle that seemed to be a virus. She told him that "...It looks like a virus." Now we know what she saw was HIV.

I heard many stories of how the Sweeneys, Bradleys, and O'Briens came to thrive in New York, then Boston.

*     *      *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *      *      *      *     *     I saw Paul on other occasions while in Boston. Paul is my biological father. We got to spend some great time, driving around, having some meals, visiting with his sister, my Aunt, Nancy Hennessey. I met Papa's friend Ray O'Hara, whose name I have heard many many times in the dozen years since Paul and I met.  And I heard stories of Alana and Will's children, Emma and Max.

Another highlight was that I got to meet the foster parents that took care of me between the time when Marilynn released her parental rights to me, and when my parents adopted me. They had me from March 13th until very early April, 1968. It was pretty amazing to meet these people, the Flemings. I met Mr. and Mrs. David Fleming, as well as two of their daughters and one granddaughter.

Marilynn did most of the work, tracking down the fact that Somerville Catholic Charities had moved, wearing down the social worker until she gave the telephone number and address of the Flemings, after obtaining their consent, of course. Stoneham, Mass. The house they have was built in 1876! It was the first house that I lived in after leaving the hospital in Weymouth. To hear the stories from the Flemings, my primary caretaker was their daughter, six years my senior, and her memory of me was remarkable. It turned out I was only their second foster child (Anthony was their first), so they remembered me. They had named me for my baptism - a baptism where the priest made a home visit to do the baptism. They named me Andrew Francis. They said I had looked like I could be an Andrew.

I asked Mrs. Fleming how many foster children she cared for, and said they stopped counting after twenty-five.  I saw the room where I spent nearly all my first three weeks. Marilynn and I tag-teamed the story of the Finding as we sat in the Fleming's living room, with a great, roaring fire behind us in a wood-burning stove.  The younger daughter works in Redondo for Napster. The older daughter, who cared for me as a newborn, had a daughter there, a toddler, who pieced a puzzle together, and behaved in observant quietude during our visit. Mrs. Fleming made coffee and served chocolate pudding pie, with other chocolates. I felt so very welcome, just as I would in any family household.

It is an unexpected, wonderful experience to find the Flemings, to make one hundred percent complete what was very nearly whole already in my history. Marilynn made it happen, and it was a true joy. After the joyous Finding of 1994, all my wonderings and "What Ifs" were satisfied, but there was still that missing month, and I sometimes wondered where I was. I was glad to be able to say "Thank You" to the Flemings. They set me on a good path that was subsequently guided by my parents, the McDonalds.

*     *      *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *      *      *      *     *     I often use the term "The Finding" to refer to finding my biological parents. Biological parents sounds cold and scientific. It's just a distinguishing term. If I tell the story to somebody in person, they're the people that made me. My mother, my father, with no discarding or forgetting or discounting of who my mother and father are - that is, the McDonalds. It's a two for one now.